Does God Regret this Podcast?

Daniel Beecher (0:02)

The question becomes, how could God regret, or repent himself of something? And someone online has this answer to that.

SPEAKER_2 (0:14)

So the Hebrew word for regret is נחם, and it's difficult to translate into English.

Daniel McClellan (0:19)

Well, I'm going to have to say, all right, let's see it.

Daniel Beecher (0:23)

Boom, baby! That's a golden phrase right there.

Daniel McClellan (0:27)

Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Daniel Beecher (0:33)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Daniel McClellan (0:34)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things going this second time around, Dan?

Daniel Beecher (0:51)

Things are going great. I like that you've done a nod to the fact that we started to record this and then had a technical difficulty in the form of my brain not having done something that very much needed to do.

And now everything's running smoothly and we're rocking on all four cylinders.

Daniel McClellan (1:10)

So we've already had a mulligan. So if we screw it up this time, that is totally on us.

Daniel Beecher (1:15)

Yeah, if we screw it up this time, you're just getting the screwed up version, and that's that.

We're not going back again. Dan, you, my friend, have just come back from what sounds by all reports like an amazing trip to the Holy Land.

Daniel McClellan (1:35)

Israel, Palestine, yes. I was leading a tour group there. I was there from, what was it? June 10th to 21st.

Had a great time.

It was the first time I've led a tour group out there. We visited a number of spots in Israel and in Palestine and helped a lot of really cool people better understand not only the archeology and the history and the literature, but also understand a little better what's going on today between these two areas and their people. And they got to meet a bunch of great people from both sides of that tension that's going on out there.

Daniel Beecher (2:17)

Oh, do they have a little tension out there?

Daniel McClellan (2:19)

There's quite a bit of tension out there.

Daniel Beecher (2:20)

I hadn't heard of it. Is that new? Is that a new thing?

Daniel McClellan (2:25)

Quite old, actually.

And I was supposed to be going with my wife, as you know, and then it sounds like the State Department is having trouble with ye old passport renewals these days. They're taking a lot longer than they normally do. And so she was not able to go with me, but we had a contingency plan in place, and I had the treat of getting to text a couple of close friends of mine who know the area very well and had wanted to travel there with me at some point and say, hey, do you have two weeks off and a passport? And one of them did. So a friend of mine named David Burnett joined me for the trip and had a wonderful time. He's doing a PhD at Edinburgh right now.

And we are actually organizing a conference on monotheism for next year at Brown University. And I'm hoping to have him on the show at some point soon. He's a very gregarious person.

I think you'll enjoy him. And yeah, we had a great time. And I was a little nervous about what kind of weirdos would pay a bunch of money to travel to Israel, Palestine with me. And it turns out very cool weirdos. So yeah, it was a wonderful time. I met some great people. And I, yeah, got to eat a bunch of great food. I got to enjoy an area that I love. I got to visit some places I hadn't been to before, and got to share it with a good friend of mine. So all in all, it was a wonderful trip.

Daniel Beecher (4:01)

That's awesome. You know, I should say that this is something that we are working towards you and I for this show. We're working towards doing some tours, various tours.

We're in talks with a travel company right now. So if any of our listeners would like, after hearing some of this stuff, would think that that would be a fun thing to do or an interesting thing to do, you can let us know right now. We don't have anything planned. Our first tour will probably not be till the spring of next year. But send us an email, which is contact at dataoverdogmapod.com, and let us know that you're interested in joining us. We'll compile, you know, we'll keep a list of all the people who are interested, maybe put tour in the subject line, and then we can let you know when we're going, how much it's going to cost all of that sort of thing. Because I think a lot of you are going to want to do this, especially after hearing some of what, Dan, you have to say today.